The 'not so Final' Destination (2009)...yup, there's gonna be another one

After blowing up an airplane, causing a major traffic pile up and making a usually fun and thrilling roller coaster ride not so fun and thrilling and then subsequently killing all of the remaining survivors there after from each event, the Final Destination series returns once again. This time, it’s the fourth quarter and Death is Kobe Bryant (or Michael Jordan depending on your generation or bias). Of course there’s an all new cast because Death needs fresh victims to play with, fill with paranoia and savagely pick off.

The fourth film in the blockbuster franchise, entitled The Final Destination, starts off with four friends;
Nick (Bobby Campo), Lori (Shantel Van Santen), Hunt (Nick Zano), and Janet (Haley Webb); at a NASCAR race this time around. Like clockwork, there’s an over the top devastating car crash which takes out an entire seating section. Yes, the same section these four friends are enjoying the race from. As spectators run for their ever-loving lives, they are systematically taken out by flying car debris and the falling infrastructure of the stadium itself. Our four heroes all perish in this pandemonium. After the mayhem has ended, in classic Final Destination style, the scene rewinds to right before the crash. One of the four friends, Nick, has daydreamed the entire chaotic event in a premonition and causes a fit disrupting others from concentrating on the race they paid good money for. This outburst gets his friends and a small group of people out of the stadium just before the crash happens. The group of people, who are thanking their luckiest of stars including Nick, for a second chance at their existence, begin to perish in the exact order that they died in Nick’s premonition. Now, as usual, it is a mad dash to prevent everyone from falling prey to the Grim Reaper’s thirst for causalities.

The overall concept of the Final Destination collection is very interesting within itself. “What is Death’s plan?” “Can you change your own fate?” Who, when, how and if we die is completely out of our hands, that much we know. Despite the characters trying to save themselves in these films, all they ever wind up doing is simply changing the way and order in which they die. Death always gets its man (or woman). We realize this concept is indefinably true: Death is imminent.

Although I feel like I’ve seen enough of Final Destination’s recurring plot line, truthfully, I keep coming back for more. Mainly, because of the random creative ways the characters meet their doom. For instance, one character in this entry is dragged down a neighborhood street on fire by his own tow-truck which explodes while another gets put through a fence that cookie cuts his body into diamond shapes. The special effects were decently done but the CGI (Computer Generated Image) seemed cartoon-like to me. You could obviously tell what parts were real and what parts were completely counterfeit. Almost as if daring the audience to be able to tell when the next computer created death would happen. The acting to say the least was sub par. Not that any epic performances were expected but to put it simply, the killings off of the characters remained the main focus as it should. Neither the acting, story, nor the direction over shadowed this.

In conclusion, I really wish I was able to see this film in 3-D. I believe this new feature that was added for the fourth film was the main selling point. A selling point that New Line Cinema intends to recycle for the fifth installment. Without that, The Final Destination falls significantly short of all its predecessors (I think the original was the best one). I give it a bleak “2 I’m very sad I didn’t see it in 3-D’s out of 5”.

-“There’s gonna be a huge crash!” -“Of course there’s a crash. There’s always a f****** crash”